A county lines drug gang who trafficked heroin and cocaine were caught when police happened on an exploited child.

Police discovered the boy during a routine check on a vulnerable woman at her home in Livingstone Road, Gillingham.

When officers entered the home the child jumped 15 feet from a first floor window, dropping £100, and became injured.

The boy was found to be carrying wraps of heroin and cocaine, his phone records showed he was trafficked from Essex to sell drugs.

Further probes into the device led police to Dylon Brandon, 32, Ceyhan Kuruovali, 29, and eventually ringleader Clyde Simms, 26.

Police matched the number plate of Brandon’s Volkswagen Golf travelling the same route as the child’s mobile phone.

A text was discovered on the boy’s phone from Brandon the day after the journey in July last year, which read: “We going to be there about 10.30 (Sik).

“It’s gonna be a bit bumpy at the start, once you got the pattern it’s calm.”

Brandon would later plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy to sell heroin and crack cocaine, and one count of facilitation to exploit a person, on his first day of trial.

Investigations into his phone led officers to the home of 39-year-old Ceyhan Kuruovali, in Flaxman Court, Brompton.

A search uncovered “significant amounts” of heroin and cocaine stashed behind a picture frame, while he was found nearby carrying 43 cocaine wraps and 38 of heroin.

Police found Kuruovali in possession of various mobile phones, with one nicknamed the P-Line, used to advertise drugs to potential buyers and set up deals.

Kuruovali pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity to two counts of conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine and two counts of intent to supply.

His P-Line black Nokia phone led to ringleader Clyde Simms,26, who topped it up in Baba Food and Wine in Gillingham High Street just before midnight on July 22 last year.

Driving his blue Fiat Scudo, Simms stopped at the McDonald’s Drive Thru on the Medway City Industrial Estate at 2am on September 4 when police raided him.

He was carrying almost £900 cash and mobile phones containing incriminating messages and phone logs, linking Simms to the other convicts.

Simms pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to supply Class A drugs but was found guilty after trial this week, prosecutor Serena Gates told Canterbury Crown Court.

Judge Mark Weekes told Simms: “That was a phone used to send out large quantities of text message advertisements to sell drugs.

“The phone was the baton and I consider you to be the conductor who used it. Those who deal in drugs cause human pain and misery.”

Simms, from London, was jailed for seven years. Kuruovali, from Gillingham, was jailed for four years one month.

Brandon, from Hertfordshire, was jailed for four years.

Read more: All the latest news from Medway

To read more of our in depth coverage of all of the major trials coming out of crown and magistrates' courts across the county, click here.